Jo Quail: The Rebirth Of Jo Quail

To chat to JO QUAIL is one of life’s more comforting and cosy experiences. The cellist and composer is as down to earth in person as she comes across onstage, a place where she has transfixed audiences across the world with her musicianship and material from the concert halls of London to the stages at some of metal’s most iconic festivals. Yet, when the world shut down in March of 2020, she admits we may not have seen her again.

“For a while, I thought it was a sign from above to just quit and not do it anymore; I felt like I didn’t know who I was,” she explains frankly. “I hadn’t been an overnight success, so my career had been gradually building and was just about to come to a head with a headline European tour following shows in Australia, and then it felt like the carpet was pulled out from under my feet. I’d ploughed all of this work into my life, and then acts of God seemed to have taken it all away.”

It took months for JO QUAIL to even pick up an instrument again, describing her own experiences of the pandemic as a ‘paralysis’. However, when she managed to, the wall that had come up around her began to fall, and it led to a crucial realisation. “This was the big transition where I understood that I was composer as well as a performer. Prior to this, I wouldn’t have said that because, even though I’d written albums, they were linked to the live stage. The Parodos Cairn (released in the summer of 2020 and comprising audio samples sent to Jo during the first weeks of lockdown) was so important here because I was learning production techniques, to use OBS and the like, and the boundaries lifted.”

Whereas Jo had previously thought she wasn’t good at production or didn’t know how to, she was now liberated. The creative freedom she had initially discovered during the writing of the Roadburn Festival-commissioned piece The Cartographer was back, and now she had the production nous to bring it to life. The result was Invocation/ Supplication, a pair of musical landscapes written simultaneously and proving that, for all of her work as a soloist, Jo knew she could do it with other parts in mind.

“In writing these two, I enjoyed every single aspect of the composition from a creative and production process in a way that I never have before, but I’m not going to say that this is a new direction and I’m forever more going to write songs for people. I may do, of course, and my next album may have 25 tracks or whatever, but I don’t know, and I’m keeping it that way.”

One thing she is certain of, though, is that nothing she writes will ever have discernible lyrics. “If I was a betting woman, I would even put a whole fifty pence on it!” She laughs. “But no, if I want to describe something I can do it musically with far more eloquence than language, and I would never want to be bound by words.”

As such, the two vocalists on Invocation / Supplication – HEILUNG’s Maria Franz on the former and celebrated Italian singer Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari, known as LEF, on the latter – sing only notes and melodies, but both turn in impressive performances in their own way. Invocation is a rousing, near-full orchestral piece featuring French horn, percussion, bass and the Sing United choir. In contrast, as is Quail’s want, Supplication is far more stripped back, with just her, LEF and trombonist Koen Kaptijn in a more intimate affair.

“I always have people in mind; I create parts for specific player,” explains Jo. “Steve Thompson (trombonist on Invocation) was my tutor for the instrument on The Cartographer and I had him in mind for the parts I created, similarly Tom Atherton did the same but with percussion. As for Julia McDonnell, it was important for me to have a woman on board because Macha (the opening track to Invocation) is linked to the ancient Irish goddess who is also a warrior queen, so a female influence was vital.”

It won’t be long before JO QUAIL is on the road again, undertaking a co-headline tour across the UK in December with fellow soloist Jon Gomm, where she’ll be performing a mix of material from across her back catalogue – it’s a far cry from three years ago where she nearly packed it all in. “I’m spending a lot of time now – especially when I’m teaching – attempting to empower people,” she says. “The past few years have opened up opportunities for me and now I want to help people take ownership of their abilities, because a lot of the time, those talents are more than people think they are.”

Invocation / Supplication is out now via By Norse Music. 

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